This is Steven Salzberg's blog on genomics, pseudoscience, medical breakthroughs, higher education, and other topics, including skepticism about unscientific medical practices. Here's where I can say what I really think about abuses and distortions of science, wherever I see them.

NIH opens the floodgates to creating super-viruses

Some scientists really want to earn their "mad scientist" label. Ever since Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, novelists and screenwriters have shown us the dangers of letting mad scientists pursue their dreams without any controls. Of course, those stories are fiction.

In the microbial world, though, technology has caught up with fiction. Scientists today can create viruses from scratch, as they've already done with the polio virus, back in 2002. Using the tools of modern genomics, virologists and microbiologists can make pathogens much, much more deadly. But would anyone really want to do this? The answer, it turns out, is yes.

That wasn't even their first try. Only a year earlier, they did the same thing using a different flu virus (H5N1). Both of these bird flu strains have killed people, but the wild-type version of the virus rarely infects humans. The scientists running these experiments aimed to create a strain that could get into humans much more easily.

Many scientists were mortified. 18 leading microbiologists and infectious disease experts, including Nobel laureate Sir Richard Roberts, formed the Cambridge Working Group to oppose efforts to create super-viruses in the lab. Hundreds of other scientists, including 3 more Nobel laureates, joined the group as charter members.

In response to the concerns raised by scientists and other public health experts, NIH announced a moratorium on these so-called "gain of function" (GOF) experiments, at least in the U.S. (The scientists leading the charge for GOF experiments were based primarily in The Netherlands, although they did get some funding from NIH.) The NIH convened an expert panel, the NSABB, who commissioned a 1,000-page report and then issued their own report, which was released in May of 2016.

The NSABB panel avoids taking very strong positions, but they do raise some alarms. Here's their definition of "research of concern," for example:

"...research
that could generate a pathogen that is: 1) highly transmissible and likely capable of wide and
uncontrollable spread in human populations; and 2) highly virulent and likely to cause significant
morbidity and/or mortality in humans."

This does not sound like a good idea! So what does the NSABB recommend? Well, this:

"Research proposals involving GOF research of concern ... should receive an additional, multidisciplinary review, prior to determining whether they are acceptable for funding."

I can't argue that research like this doesn't need "additional" review–but the wording here suggests that at least some experiments like this might be worth funding. Mad scientists must be rubbing their hands together in glee.

And finally, just last week NIH announced it will end the moratorium on gain-of-function research. (They made this announcement just a week before Christmas, when many people are probably not paying attention. Coincidence? Perhaps.) In his statement announcing the end of the moratorium, NIH Director Francis Collins wrote:

"I am confident that the thoughtful review process ... will help to facilitate the safe, secure, and responsible conduct of this type of research in a manner that maximizes the benefits to public health."

I am not so confident. Harvard's Marc Lipsitch, one of the leaders of the Cambridge Working Group, commented that "we don't need to do these dangerous experiments. Indeed there are many ways that can (and have) been used to answer the public health question with greater generality, little to no safety risk, and much lower cost."

But just in case there is some question, let's weigh the pluses and minuses, shall we?
Pluses:

Creating novel pathogens might lead to insights in the basic biology of viruses and bacteria.